Before considering HB 1177, consider “Consumer Regulated Electricity
Published in the Denver Post as a Letter to the Editor:
Allen Best’s column “Colorado needs good data center policy. Discount electricity is not it.” (March 10) highlighted concerns with House Bill 1177. The driver behind the bill is interest in capturing data center growth for Colorado. I applaud such interest, but there are other ways of capturing some of that business without imposing speculation risk on Coloradans.
“Consumer Regulated Electricity” or CRE is one such alternative. CRE would allow investors to create NEW and INDEPENDENT electric utilities using their OWN capital to focus on the data centers. These new utilities (“CRE Utilities”) would be able to build projects much faster and with far greater innovation than is possible today. If Colorado can enable faster development of new electricity supplies, the state would have a tremendous competitive advantage.
CRE’s features create the landscape for speed and innovation. Most critically, CRE Utilities will sell only to large, sophisticated customers. Second, CRE Utilities will be islanded. That means that they and their customers will form an electricity island, not connected to existing grids or utilities. Third, CRE Utilities won’t need to be regulated by the PUC. Since CRE Utilities will sell only to large, sophisticated customers and not residential customers and they can’t affect the cost or reliability of the regulated grids or utilities since they’re islanded, there simply is no need for PUC oversight.
Instead of speculating on data center growth with the money of Coloradans, I urge the House to consider CRE and other alternatives before considering HB25-1177.
